Australia’s Internet filter: could legal content be banned, too?

Liberal democracies aren't generally pleased with massive state-run mandatory Internet filtering schemes, but Australia's government is plowing ahead with just such a project. Stoking fears that such a scheme could easily blacklist legal content from all Australians, one national politician has now called for precisely that sort of a blacklist. Under the "Family First" party's scheme, hardcore sex and drug content would be added to the list of "illegal" content, even though they are actually legal for adults to view offline.

Family First isn't a major party—it has only one federal member of Parliament—but it does command more regional support. While massive federal government intervention in the Internet might not seem to be an especially conservative principle, Family First argues that the porn problem has reached epidemic levels, that parental responsibility simply isn't workable, and that kids are stumbling over damaging material both purposefully and by accident. Government needs to act.

The party's federal legislator, Steve Fielding, is opposed to both a "fart tax" (PDF) and to an unfettered Internet. The party "will work to achieve Government commitment to establish a Mandatory Filtering Scheme at the ISP Server Level in this country," says the official party plank (PDF). The government agrees, and it has been pursuing a two-tiered scheme. The first tier would be a "clean feed" that filters porn and "illegal content," and it would be optional. The second tier would filter only "illegal content" and would be mandatory for all Australians.

No to cow fart taxes, yes to Internet filtering

But what would be included in "illegal content"? The government isn't saying yet, but Family First has its own ideas. The Sydney Morning Herald asked Fielding what he envisions for the mandatory feed.

"Family First would consider a mandatory ISP-based filtering system that protects children by blocking illegal content like child pornography, but allows adults to opt out of filtering to access material classified R18+ or less," said the party.

The statement indicates that any material rated above R 18+ (including X 18+ and "refused classification") would fall under the mandatory blacklist and could not be accessed through any Australian ISP. Such material is currently legal for Australian adults.

The free speech concerns of a politicized blacklist that includes legal material are profound, and they are stressed by groups like the "No Clean Feed" campaign. But there are technical concerns as well.

The System Administrators' Guild of Australia, SAGE-AU, issued a statement again stressing its opposition to Internet filtering on grounds that it simply wouldn't work. "SAGE-AU remains concerned that the filters tested are unable to provide an effective, reliable filtering solution with the performance required for modern broadband connections," she said. "The filters tested have demonstrated an excessively high exclusion rate of legitimate Internet content."

The government's own testing has shown that the filters still have serious problems with false positives and can degrade network performance from 20-75 percent. If Australian Internet users aren't thrilled about the metered 'Net connections that are common in the country, we can only imagine how much they will enjoy metered connections that run 20-75 percent slower and censor the Internet.